In the past couple of years, Microsoft and Oracle have both been investing heavily in building robust business intelligence (BI) technology solutions to help other businesses transform their corporate and user data into rich visuals, stay in the know, identify trends as they happen and drive sales. Having interviewed Intersog's data analytics team, I've prepared a comparison overview of today's leading and most commonly used BI platforms in Big Data development environment - Microsoft Power BI and Oracle BI.

Power BI

Oracle BI

Cost

Free of charge

Standard edition starts at $1,200, each additional module adds up to the cost

Development Environment

Advantages

Excel-based application development, so most of developers can start coding right away and avoid a steep learning curve

Team collaboration is enabled

A wide array of different data sources to use. However, any BI solution is effective as long as it's based on purely consistent data which can only be ensured with DWH.

Good opportunities for building various design parameters, hierarchies, slice charts, etc.

Disadvantages

No team collaboration

Toolsets aren't localized

Development tools seem to be underdeveloped. There's no way to create a composite key.

Deep data scientist / analytics skills are required for development.

System frequently freezes up or slows down

You can only use DWH as a data source, nothing else

To fix issues or make changes, you have to download your solution's file to local PC first, which is very inconvenient (no real-time troubleshooting /editing)

Interactivity

No data visualization in the real time, you can only schedule or make changes manually

The average user can create and save insight-based reports right in a web browser, which eliminates web developer's involvement

Employee skills required

Deep knowledge of MS Excel, as all BI solutions are based on Excel interface

On-job or remote data visualization / analytics training is required

Publishing and accessibility

Published on SharePoint portals

Published online through BI services

Solution is distributed as an Excel file

Reports are accessible via any web browser

No program access to BI reports

Full and easy API-based integration with any existing infrastructure

This comparison shows well that the only advantage of Microsoft Power BI is ease of use and no fee involved. However, Power BI solutions cannot be used for robust data analytics and visualization projects that require complex IT infrastructure to execute. Power BI is lacking a lot of useful features that can be found in Oracle BI. As such, Oracle BI solutions appear to be better suiting complex business data requirements. Yet, high cost of platform usage and project development and implementation ensure the system can only be used by large organizations that can afford to allocate several thousand dollar budgets for building their business intelligence systems.

For smaller organizations and startups it makes a lot more sense to outsource custom development of their BI solutions to 3rd party providers that are both experienced in Big Data development and are able to leverage external tech talent pools to ensure cost reduction and optimization!

Are you looking to build an effective BI solution and in need of professional assistance with specification, PoC, prototyping and software development?

Get in touch!

Vik is our Brand Journalist and Head of Online Marketing / PR with 11+ years of international experience in IT B2B. He's also a guest blog contributor to Business2community, SitePoint, Journal of mHealth, Wearable Valley and other IT portals. You can contact him directly on LinkedIn.